Lee's Summit youth soccer coach is charged in child porn case

A youth soccer coach from Lee’s Summit was charged Tuesday in federal court with using a hidden camera to record nude videos of girls on his team.

Joel D. White, 40, appeared Tuesday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Kansas City on the charge of using a minor to produce child pornography. He was ordered held in custody pending a detention hearing Thursday.

Police in Commerce City, Colo., discovered the pornographic images on a camera that White was carrying last month when he was arrested at a soccer event for allegedly stealing jerseys and memorabilia, according to court documents filed to support the charge.

A Colorado detective notified Lee’s Summit detectives after looking at the camera and discovering what were described as “disturbing images of nude minors,” according to the court documents.

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According to the documents, videos recovered by police show White secretly placing a camera in a bedroom and then leaving the room. A short time later, girls who appeared to be 12 or 13 were seen entering the room to change clothes. The girls were fully nude in the videos, according to the allegations.

“The victims did not appear to know that they were being videotaped,” according to the court documents.

After each of the recordings, White was seen on camera re-entering the room and retrieving the camera.

After serving a search warrant at White’s residence on Monday, detectives determined that all the videos had been taken inside a bedroom at the house.

In a subsequent interview with detectives, White admitted to videotaping girls at his house on 10 to 15 occasions between May and October last year, according to the court documents. He also allegedly told detectives that he had videotaped himself touching the breast of one girl as she slept.

At least four girls have been identified from the videos, and the parents of two girls in the videos told police that their daughters were on White’s soccer team and had been to his house, the documents allege. Authorities said he had been a coach for under-12 and under-15 girls teams.

White was an independent coach whose team played as part of the Lee’s Summit Soccer Association, and he had passed a background check, association officials said. He has been suspended as a coach. The association said it has fully cooperated with police.